How can I give God my all?
Am November 30th 2009
2 Timothy 2:1-7
Introduction
Alexander the Great and a small company of soldiers approached a strongly fortified walled city. Alexander, standing outside the walls, raised his voice and demanded to see the king. When the king arrived, Alexander insisted that the king surrender the city and its inhabitants to Alexander and his little band of fighting men. The king laughed, “Why should I surrender to you? You can’t do us any harm!”
But Alexander offered to give the king a demonstration. He ordered his men to line up single file and start marching. He marched them straight toward a sheer cliff. The townspeople gathered on the wall and watched in shocked silence as, one by one, Alexander’s soldiers marched without hesitation right off the cliff to their deaths! After ten soldiers died, Alexander ordered the rest of the men to return to his side. The townspeople and the king immediately surrendered to Alexander the Great. They realized that if a few men were actually willing to commit suicide at the command of this dynamic leader, then nothing could stop his eventual victory.
If you claim to be a born again believer in Jesus Christ this morning, are you committed to Him, to give Him you life?
If I as a husband am faithful to my wife 75% of the time (that is more than half), am I a good husband? What would be required of me to be a good husband? No less than 100%! So how can I consider myself a good Christian, one who is sold out to God without giving Him 100% of me? It can not be done.
Today, we want to see what it takes to go all the way with God. If I give God my all what does it take of me?
Read Scriptures: 2 Timothy 2:1-7
I. If I am going all the way with God I will endure hardships along the way.
Vs. 3 “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus”
Some people may want to serve God but until they make that conscious decision to go from “I want to serve God” to “I will serve God” they will never endure the hardships of being a Christian.
What will happen to the person who says “I want to serve God” is that they will travel comfortably along the Christian life until something comes along that is a real hardship and instead of enduring it- they run from it.
Take for example Peter. I believe that he was a “I want to serve God” type of guy until the day of Pentecost and then he became a “I will serve the Lord.” He saw the wind and did not endure through it. He was in the courtyard and could not proclaim he was a follower of Christ. After Pentecost, he endured the hardships.
You may be sitting here today saying to yourself- I can not do that- endure what ever comes along my way because I am a Christian. I can not either but there is help for us.
2 Corinthians 1:8-10 “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,”
I will endure any hardship that comes across my path with the help of Jesus Christ.
II. If I am going all the way with God, I can not live like the rest of the world lives.
Vs. 4 “No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs--he wants to please his commanding officer”
A soldier can not live like a civilian and a Christian can not live like the world lives.
A soldier has to be totally focused on his mission to be successful and the Christian has to be totally focused on his relationship to Christ to be successful.
If a soldier is not focused on the mission at hand, he will get distracted and not fulfill the mission.
If as a Christian I do not focus on living for Christ, then the temptation will be too strong, and slowly that Christian will begin to look more and more like a lost person.
III. If I am going all the way with God, I have to keep his rules.
Vs.5 “Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules.”
If I am a cafeteria style Christian where I pick and chose the rules that I want to follow, I am not going all the way with God.
If I just pick a handful of rules and focus my attention on them then I am not going all the way with God.
God wants you to follow all the rules.
IV. If I am going all the way with God, I got to realize it is going to involve hard work.
Vs. 6 “The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.”
You can not put the Christian life on autopilot and just sit back. Being a Christian is hard work.
We fight everyday to surrender everyday to the Lord, and we also fight temptation everyday. It’s not easy, its not for the faint of heart.
Conclusion
Are you committed to serving Jesus, are you all in, or are you riding the fence, what we don’t need in this day and time is fence riders, we have enough of those, we need people who are sold out ready to serve Jesus till the death, not folks who will give up the first time we get our feelings hurt.
Maybe you need to come unashamed and surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to come an publicly profess your faith in Jesus, maybe you need to come and be scripturally baptized.
